1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scanner, and more particularly to a multi-mode scanner capable of scanning one single side or both sides of an ordinary document and a bound document (or even any bent document).
2. Related Art
In general, when a bound document, such as a passport, book or the like, is to be scanned, the bound document cannot be transported past a sheet-fed scanner because the left and right sides of the bound document have different thicknesses, or due to the book back or binding mode. So, a flatbed scanner must be utilized to acquire the document image. However, the drawback of the flatbed scanner is that the flatbed scanner cannot scan both sides of the bound document at the same time. So, the user has to turn over the bound document to re-scan the document, and this is time-consuming and not user friendly.
On the other hand, credentials, such as passports and identification cards, often have to be scanned at the government organization, such as customhouse, for the immigration registration. If the flatbed scanner for scanning the passport is used to scan both sides of the credential, two scan operations have to be performed. If the sheet-fed scanner is to be purchased in order to scan the credential quickly, the cost is high and the sheet-fed scanner occupies an additional space, which is disadvantageous to the limited office environment.
Furthermore, if many diversified authentication functions corresponding to fingerprint, chip and radio frequency identification can be integrated into the scanner, then the scanner can operate in more modes to satisfy more requirements.